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I've used both Gnome and KDE based UI's, and yeah, I don't feel strongly about the differences, but also I've never felt like either one was actually good. They

I've used both Gnome and KDE based UI's, and yeah, I don't feel strongly about the differences, but also I've never felt like either one was actually good. They both get the job done, but they both feel designed by developers for developers, on the assumption that anything you can't figure out in the UI you'll Google or open a terminal and text editor to deal with it. Compared to, say, the iPad 2 which felt clearly designed for lay users down to the settings UI. (I feel like the later versions of iOS got more complex and harder to parse, so I'm picking the iteration I liked the most.) But then again, it's Linux, I'm a developer, I'm used to Googling how to do things, and I play my video games on Windows, so 90%+ of my time in Linux is in the terminal, text editor (or IDE), and browser anyway. So no complaints - the presence of a fully featured UI isn't why I use Linux.

inetknght 6y ago
> * they both feel designed by developers for developers* As a developer, I disagree. KDE's interface is often broken and/or unintuitive for what I want to do. At least it usually provides the levers if they're hard to use or find. Gnome's interface is almost always too simplified and doesn't present the powerful levers at all unless you go digging behind the scenes and hope that an update doesn't break some "private" implementation detail.
- munchbunny 6y ago
  > KDE's interface is often broken and/or unintuitive for what I want to do. At least it usually provides the levers if they're hard to use or find. I'm not so sure that we're saying different things. I didn't mean it as a compliment, more as an explanation. In general developers aren't good at designing UX (not their job), and in general developers are used to often byzantine UX, including falling back to terminal rituals, and both UI's feel (to me) like they're 80% of the way there and left that way because of the tacit understanding that there's always the terminal and text configs.
- ip34162 6y ago
  KDE recently improved it's interface. https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.21.0/ https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.21.0/ If anyone want to try the latest KDE Plasma, KDE Neon has it on top of a stable Ubuntu LTS base. https://neon.kde.org/ https://neon.kde.org/

inetknght 6y ago

> * they both feel designed by developers for developers* As a developer, I disagree. KDE's interface is often broken and/or unintuitive for what I want to do. At least it usually provides the levers if they're hard to use or find. Gnome's interface is almost always too simplified and doesn't present the powerful levers at all unless you go digging behind the scenes and hope that an update doesn't break some "private" implementation detail.

munchbunny 6y ago
> KDE's interface is often broken and/or unintuitive for what I want to do. At least it usually provides the levers if they're hard to use or find. I'm not so sure that we're saying different things. I didn't mean it as a compliment, more as an explanation. In general developers aren't good at designing UX (not their job), and in general developers are used to often byzantine UX, including falling back to terminal rituals, and both UI's feel (to me) like they're 80% of the way there and left that way because of the tacit understanding that there's always the terminal and text configs.
ip34162 6y ago
KDE recently improved it's interface. https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.21.0/ https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.21.0/ If anyone want to try the latest KDE Plasma, KDE Neon has it on top of a stable Ubuntu LTS base. https://neon.kde.org/ https://neon.kde.org/